Tourists

Why leave it to the tourists to win all the game-show grand prizes? The luxury trips to Aruba? The bedroom sets and patio furniture? Now that summer is over and tourism is slow, it's time for those who live in Los Angeles to shine. "Let's Make a Deal" films four days a week, two shows a day, in Hollywood. It always needs an audience. Unlike "Jeopardy," you don't have to pass a test to play. What you do need to do is be on -- enthusiastic, smiling, ready to jump up and down and dance.

Authorities arrested nine people suspected of aiding a group that gunned down a French family last month, justice officials said. Witnesses said three gunmen fired automatic weapons at the five French tourists who were having a roadside picnic Dec. 24 in Aleg, about 160 miles southeast of the capital, Nouakchott. Only the father survived. The killings were cited as a main reason for last week's cancellation of the Dakar Rally, a 5,760-mile car and motorcycle race that crosses the desert nation.

Thousands of tourists were stranded here Saturday by a 24-hour strike by Barcelona air traffic controllers, airport sources said. The strike affected one-third of Spanish airspace, including all of the country's eastern Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands, which include Majorca and Minorca. The Barcelona controllers also are responsible for flights leaving French airspace to overfly the Mediterranean.

I read with interest your article "Tourists' Imminent Departure Has Laguna's Walkarounders Reeling." The story focused on the locals celebration of the departure of the summer tourist swarm and quoted one Laguna Beach local making reference to the increased number of tourists year-round as saying, "I wish it was like in the old days where, when Labor Day came, you really got your town back." Some of us remember the Laguna of the "old" days. Here in Seal Beach we still have a bit of that "old" days feeling left, but we are having to fight very hard to save our city from the city government.

Caroline Taylor (Letters, April 1) quite correctly insists that the state should require that hotels/motels notify their guests at registration when spraying is scheduled. The position taken by the (state) Department of Agriculture is that they see no need for the state to require hotels/motels to notify their guests. However, the Department of Health Services takes the position of advising residents of communities to be sprayed that they should take some simple general precautions to reduce avoidable exposure to any potentially hazardous chemical.

A bright spot in the local economy -- tourism -- continues to generate big numbers for the region's beleaguered businesses. Tourists spent $16.4 billion in 2012, most of it on hotels and restaurants, according to a study commissioned by the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board. By comparison, the agency said, tourists spent $15.4 billion in 2011. Tourism last year also generated more than $2 billion in state and local taxes, the study said. The study, completed by Micronomics, an economics research and consulting firm from Los Angeles, also concluded that tourism helped support nearly 230,000 jobs last year.

The International Olympic Committee will impose strict qualifying standards to weed out "tourists" for the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. Marc Holder, an IOC executive-board member and president of the international ski federation, said the Winter Games at Albertville, France, earlier this year had their share of inept competitors. "We had tourists," Holder said. "There were tourists who fell six, or seven times in giant slalom.

There was a time when a mushroom cloud billowing over the Nevada desert was celebrated as a symbol of American strength — and, about 75 miles southeast in Las Vegas, as a terrific tourist draw. In the 1950s, casinos threw "dawn parties," where gamblers caroused until a flash signaled the explosion of an atomic bomb at the Nevada Test Site. Tourism boosters promoted the Atomic Cocktail (vodka, brandy, champagne and a dash of sherry) and pinups such as Miss Atomic Blast, who was said to radiate "loveliness instead of deadly atomic particles.

It isn't just parking that complicates life in Malibu. No, some residents of that beach-side hamlet want everyone to know just how tough it can be living in paradise. Responding to The Times' editorial on that city's novel plan to enlist parking vigilantes to ticket cars deposited in the same spot for too long, a few Malibu residents took issue with the editorial board's view that the program "is just one more way of making Malibu inhospitable to visitors. " The Malibu residents who wrote us didn't appreciate this, and some vouched for their own hospitality -- by pointing out how burdensome visitors are on their town.

If you ever wanted to get completely away from talking on your cellphone, the place to go was North Korea. "It was like there was an invisible wall surrounding the country," said Gareth Johnson, managing director of Young Pioneer Tours, which has been taking tour groups to North Korea since 2008. "You crossed the border into North Korea and your cellphone just died -- you got absolutely no signal," said Johnson, speaking from the tour company's office in Xian, China. But the fanatically strict North Korean policy against cellphone use by outsiders has begun to crack.